It helps when you know the Family that newts are in, and can search on government pages for records of the species in New Brunswick. We actually just talked about these guys in herpetology today, they have a pretty cool life cycle. The eggs are laid in water and hatch into an aquatic larvae (this is usual for urodeles--the salamanders). Next, though, depending on environmental conditions it either metamorphoses into an aquatic adult or a "red eft" (the form you saw) that is terrestrial. The red eft eventually metamorphoses into the aquatic adult phase. It's the only species of amphibian to alter metamorphosis like this. =)
The red eft stage does have toxic skin (that's why it's so brightly colored), but unless your pal ate it he's fine.

I believe it is a common Eastern newt (also known as the Red Spotted Newt), Notophthalmus viridescens.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_newt
The pictures in the wikipedia are all of the juvenile stage, which looks quite different than your adult specimen, but here is a better one:

Perhaps Almost Smart, being in part a bunch of assorted numbers, prefers "pi" (as in 3.1415926535897932384626433832795..., of course!) over any sort of implied, Spanish spiciness. Or maybe it just is mean and likes making people sad. *Pokes AS in its digital ribs and laughs vindictively*